Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it takes to stand up to authority

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 80 posts

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#51

Post by AmericanChopper »

squozzer wrote: post #16

I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.

I think that’s a pretty cynical view. You could just as easily say it’s about discipline. To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#52

Post by albutr »

chrisco255 wrote: post #23
jpfed wrote: post #21

>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.

How would a government weaponize this? By going around damaging people's brains with brute force?

By promoting hard-hitting contact sports to youth, and issuing equipment that doesn't do a good job at protecting the head?

Even considering the underreporting with young, high school athletes, a large number of young football players in the US have suffered concussions[1] at a very young age when their brains are developing, and that's with equipment that we can reasonably assume is designed with safety in mind. If a nefarious government were to try to promote a sport, which had rules and equipment that lead to a higher risk of brain injury, and cultivated an image/environment that elevates "toughness"(not complaining when you feel you've been injured; a significant fraction (~16%) of high school football players continue to play even after being hit hard enough to lose consciousness, so that attitude is there, just need to bump the number up), that might get you close.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussions_in_American_footba...

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#53

Post by throwawayzx9 »

jpfed wrote: post #21

>Studies on patients with localised brain damage are helping to answer part of this question. When people have lesions in the prefrontal cortex – the outermost layer of the front part the brain – they appear to be much more prone to following orders than the general population. WOW, that's going to come in handy when some government decides to weaponize it.

Look around. I don’t think it’s even necessary for governments to do that. It’s way easier to just keep people poor and rural and then lie to them.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#54

Post by projektir »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #51
squozzer wrote: post #16

I'm not sure we can do much to understand the role of authority without understanding the role of conditioning in what makes people act. For instance, why are most schools so regimented and rule-rich? For efficiency, certainly, but not all school rules increased efficiency. I would guess some of the rules exist to reinforce obedience to the other rules.

I think that’s a pretty cynical view. You could just as easily say it’s about discipline. To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour.

Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn't strong evidence pointing there.

> To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour.

There's no evidence to confirm this statement, even though it may sound like common sense.

And this post reads odd. The current school model is very old. If schools exist to instill discipline, and discipline is required for success, I'd expect everyone to be super successful right now.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#55

Post by watwut »

otakucode wrote: post #42
watwut wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not about to what it does with person on picture, it is about what it does with person that is writing them. The way it affects their thinking and feelings toward target, how much they are aware it is affecting them, the way it makes them more and more comfortable with insulting person on pic and what they think or feel about that. The discomfort is partly because you can make yourself like or hate people you d…

I can see that, but I don't understand how simply 'attaching a label' could lead to any real earnest sentiment. If I train myself, day in and day out, to tag a photo of children 'racist', is the presumption that I will start to actually think that children generally believe in fundamental qualitative differences between people that break along racial lines? That isn't how my brain works. If someone asks me 'hey, are…

You will be more likely to assume the children are racist in ambiguous situations. You will be more likely to react negatively to them.

Children will see your negative emotional response to them and will react to it. The negative or positive emotional response on someone determines a lot about your interaction with them and is hard to hide for most people.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#56

Post by projektir »

malmsteen wrote: post #18

I've never understood how the classic interpretation of milgram that "people can become monster under authority" were remotely relevant. "hurting other people" is just a natural tendency inside at least a large proportion if not all humans. That's why we've had so many wars in the history, bullys at school and abuse in generally ANY UNREGULATED ENVIRONEMENT (chrisitan schools in the 50s in france for example, prisons…

Claiming that people love war seems like a pretty dangerous statement to me without some very solid study. There's a lot going on there, most notably, trauma. People who went to war are not necessarily the people who come back.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#57

Post by AmericanChopper »

projektir wrote: post #54
AmericanChopper wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s a pretty cynical view. You could just as easily say it’s about discipline. To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour.

Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn't strong evidence pointing there. > To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour. There's no evidence to confirm this statement, even though it may sound like common sense. And this post reads odd. The cu…

There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness.

You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#58

Post by jokoon »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #57
projektir wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn't strong evidence pointing there. > To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour. There's no evidence to confirm this statement, even though it may sound like common sense. And this post reads odd. The cu…

There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness. You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s…

What kind of evidence? How do you define success?

Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success.

The role of school is to teach people to fit into a civilized world. It is not oppressive, it's not always conditioning, but it's a mean to give people a chance to live a comfortable life inside the frame of civilization. Success is a different thing.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#59

Post by AmericanChopper »

jokoon wrote: post #58
AmericanChopper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness. You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s…

What kind of evidence? How do you define success? Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success. The role of school is to teach people to fit into a civilized world. It is not oppressive, it's not always conditioning, but it's a mean to give people a chance to live a comfortable life inside the frame of civilization. Success is a differ…

>What kind of evidence? How do you define success?

Scientific evidence, and in every possibly way you could define success.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498890/

>This article investigates how personality and cognitive ability relate to measures of objective success (income and wealth) and subjective success (life satisfaction, positive affect, and lack of negative affect) in a representative sample of 9,646 American adults. In cross-sectional analyses controlling for demographic covariates, cognitive ability, and other Big Five traits, conscientiousness demonstrated beneficial associations of small-to-medium magnitude with all success outcomes.

This is only one example, these results are replicated in many, many other studies.

>Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success.

Conforming to societies expectations really has nothing to do with this. No matter what it is you want to achieve in life, and no matter how passionate you might be about it, any worthwhile archievement in life requires discipline. Relationships, art, sports, philosophy, career... Achievement in any of those areas requires discipline.

Even if society was in a total state of disorder, you’d still need discipline to get what you want from life.

Re: What it takes to stand up to authority

#60

Post by projektir »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #57
projektir wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn't strong evidence pointing there. > To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour. There's no evidence to confirm this statement, even though it may sound like common sense. And this post reads odd. The cu…

There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness. You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s…

I think me and you have very different requirements for "overwhelming evidence" when it comes making a sociological claim. These are extremely difficult claims to prove and get overtuned pretty frequently. If it's a claim that seems to change every 5 years and is highly reliant on the society it was based on, the evidence for it was probably never overwhelming.

I'm not sure if there's much to conscientousness besides the associated correlation with obedience to authority making it easier to get benefits from said authority.

> You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together...

I'm not really postulating that, it's rather unnecessary. Lots of bad things are done to humans and bought as cargo cult without anyone singularly conspiring for it. It's sufficient a general philosophical belief set to have been present long enough to influence some system or structure, and then you can get stuck with it for a few hundred years. This happens all the time to everything from parenting models to gender stereotypes. It's much more insidious than some people conspiring because it lives much longer than any given person.

> Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise.

Given that there are carefree goofballs getting what they want and extremely hardworking, dilligent single mothers working three jobs... I think such a strong belief in discipline is much more irrational.

It's rather self-focused, if you think about it. You think you're more powerful than the world.

Post reply on HN